In wireless communication systems, user equipment (also referred to as a user device or a client device) requests an access or scheduling assignment from an access point or base station. Many systems employ random access techniques to exchange messages related to a user equipment scheduling resource assignment, and to exchange messages related to an uplink assignment. Random access refers to a channel or a wireless resource that is not reserved for any one user equipment. Rather, multiple user equipment devices within a system can access the random access channel for exchanges related to resource assignment over which data access will be granted.
Traditional random access exchanges require two full round-trip periods before bandwidth for data transfer is allocated to the user equipment. The random access channels are expensive to use, at least because there is significantly limited bandwidth to service a number of users. The traditional random access exchange approach results in system delays, and delays in the user equipment transmitting data.
One approach to deal with random access delay involves piggybacking data on the preamble message that requests the scheduling resource. However, inclusion of data on the preamble message significantly increases bandwidth usage, which may result in unacceptable bandwidth usage levels, given the limitations in the random access channel.
Descriptions of certain details and implementations follow, including a description of the figures, which may depict some or all of the embodiments described below, as well as discussing other potential embodiments or implementations of the inventive concepts presented herein. An overview of embodiments of the invention is provided below, followed by a more detailed description with reference to the drawings.